The present disclosure relates to facilitating telecommunications through unmanned aerial vehicle, and more specifically to facilitating telecommunications through self-sustaining unmanned aerial vehicle.
High-altitude long endurance solar powered aircraft concepts have been proposed for some time. Such vehicles provide significant potential benefits. For example, weather conditions, such as wind strengths and turbulence levels, are reduced between around 50,000 to 100,000 feet altitude. High-altitude long endurance aircraft that flies above 50,000 feet can thus avoid severe weather conditions. This allows extended fly time. Additionally, this altitude range is above normal aviation authority certification needs, and large areas of the planet can be observed at this range, with the distance to the horizon being over 500 km. High-altitude long endurance aircraft flying in this altitude range is therefore suitable for aerial surveys, surveillance and emergency communications in disaster recovery situations, and/or any other applications.
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone and also referred by several other names, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. The flight of UAVs may be controlled either autonomously by onboard computers or by the remote control of a pilot on the ground or in another vehicle. UAVs have mostly found military and special operation applications, but also are increasingly finding uses in civil applications, such as policing, surveillance and firefighting, and nonmilitary security work, such as inspection of power or pipelines. UAVs are adept at gathering an immense amount of visual information and displaying it to human operators. However, it can take a great deal of time and manpower to interpret the information gathered by UAVs. In many cases, the information gathered by UAVs is misinterpreted by human operators and analysts who have a limited time window in which to interpret the information.
Most conventional UAV systems typically include a propulsion system, a navigation and control system, and payloads. Each of these need electric power to sustain their functionalities. Most commercially available UAVs are battery powered with limited fly time at one battery charge. Typically, most conventional UAVs can continuously stay in the air for no more than a few hours. Thus, effective power sources need to be developed for a conventional UAV to ensure the sustained functionality of various systems and payloads onboard the UAV.